Wide drawers or drawers that extend outside the cabinet to which they are mounted may experience racking and binding. Racking is the tendency of a drawer to change shape or shift side-to-side when moved toward the open or closed position by an off-axis force. Binding is when a lateral play in the drawer suspension device relative to the cabinet temporarily locks up the drawer when the drawer is being pulled out of or pushed into a cabinet. Various devices are available to prevent binding or racking of overly wide drawers and like structures. All such devices, however, are limited to a purely linear path of stabilizing elements. These devices are typically in the form of sliding bar linkages or rack and pinion mechanisms. Sliding bar linkages do not directly address the forces associated with racking, but rather provide linkages that limit the structural strength of the devices. Sliding bar linkages are dependent on torque vectors applied to the moving element, i.e., drawer. As such, they are least effective near the most important position of the moving element, which is a full extension of the moving element from the cabinet. Unless the moving element is quite rigid and the sliding bar link is quite lash-free, resistance to racking and binding will be marginal at best.
In most of these devices, the travel of the drawer is limited to less than the available cabinet depth. In addition, all of these devices are adversely affected by tolerance stack-up in the cabinet and drawer. Tolerance stack-up is the accumulation of variances from the nominal design dimensions of each component in an assembly. Some variance must be allowed in the manufacture of any component, due to the practical constraints on equipment and personnel in commercial production environments. Typically, an assembly achieves its function and is considered an acceptable design, despite a relatively wide variation in the physical attributes of components.
Therefore, there still remains a need for a mechanism to provide resistance to racking in overly wide drawers, particularly over a travel distance that could be somewhat greater than the depth of the cabinet in which the drawer is mounted.